Classic Players is the dramatic production company of Bob Jones University, founded in 1929 primarily to present the plays of William Shakespeare. Its first play, The Merchant of Venice was performed on June 2, 1930, with Bob Jones Jr., then an eighteen-year-old college sophomore, playing the role of the aged Shylock. During the company’s first fifty years, its productions featured not only the talents of Bob Jones Jr. and Bob Jones III but those of Elizabeth Edwards, Bob Harris, Corretta Grass, Edward Panosian, Lonnie Polson, Robert Pratt, Richard Rupp, and Don Ryerson.